Here we are, on the eve of a red wave that will see the GOP wrest over 60 House seats, 8 Senate seats, and 7 Governorships away from the Democrats. As a free-market, small government advocate, I greet this development with only minimal enthusiasm. In fact, on a scale of 1 to 10, while I certainly rate the Democrats as a shameful 1, I cannot give the Republicans a score any higher than a 4. My ratings of 1 and 4, interestingly, offend not just Democrats but Republicans as well. Allow me to elaborate.

Republicans have held the Presidency for 28 of the last 42 years. They have also held majorities in Congress for substantial periods of time. Yet, no one can dispute that the US is far more left-leaning than it was in 1968. Government spending as a percentage of GDP is much higher, incidence of single motherhood is vastly higher, free enterprise is less respected, individual liberties are lower, and popular entertainment has become vulgar, disgusting, and immoral. These are all things Republicans do not desire, yet it has happened under their noses anyway. We can thus conclude that :

Republicans winning elections does not counter leftism, it merely postpones the inexorable advance of leftism.

So why are Republicans unable to advance what their voters want, while the left can advance their agenda whether they are in office or not? The reasons for this are as follows :

Marketing Ignorance : Longtime readers are aware of how I strongly emphasize that one must never refer to leftists as 'liberals'. In reality, they are illiberal, intolerant, and rigid. By allowing them to assign a positive word like 'liberal' or 'progressive' to themselves, the right already concedes the battle before it has even begun. Would you want to enter into a public debate with someone under the agreement that they get to call themselves the 'smart/good person' while you have to be known as the 'dumb/evil person'? Yet this is what the right readily agrees to, and they appear to be incapable of learning from their errors. In 8 years, I have seen just two articles by a Republican describing why it is unwise to refer to totalitarian leftists as 'liberals', while every other article posted daily continues with this foolishness.

But it goes further. For years and years, the left has behaved with extreme hypocrisy on issues of race, ethics, and pro- vs anti-American stances. The response that the right delivers is to point out this hypocrisy in a polite manner, expecting the left to acknowledge their error and not repeat it in the future. Needless to say, the left has no problem with hypocrisy and projection, and has no intention of changing this. Yet, the Republicans still fail to notice that pointing out such examples of hypocrisy has no effect on the debate. The definition of insanity, or at least stupidity, is repeating the same action a number of times, and expecting a different result, but Republicans fail to see that the character of their opponents is far too uncivilized for the toothless tactics that Republicans restrict themselves to.

Take, for example, the African-American vote, which usually goes 90-96% for Democrats. This is true even if the Republican candidate is black and the Democrat is white (as was the case in 3 major races in 2006). An examination of recent history quickly reveals this loyalty towards Democrats as more than a little odd. George Wallace ran for President as a Democrat on a segregationist platform as recently as 1976 (note that this was after Nixon's 'Southern Strategy' approach). Furthermore, Robert Byrd, a senior leader in the KKK, was a US Senator in the Democratic party until 2010. These facts would make it less surprising for blacks to vote 90% Republican than the current reality of the opposite. But this yet again shows how poor Republican messaging is. The party of George Wallace and Robert Byrd still manages to get 90% of the black vote, due to the left's tireless propaganda in black neighborhoods, and historical revisionism in school textbooks in inner-city public schools. As a result, the black vote is not even remotely available to Republicans, and with African Americans being 11% of the US population, for a Democrat to win a nationwide election, he only has to get 40 out of the remaining 90% of votes to be cast. The Republican, by contrast, has to get 50 out of the remaining 90%. That is correct, for a Republican to win, he has to get not 50 out of 100%, but 50 out of 90%.

And while Democrat tactics have been underhanded, the Republicans can only blame themselves for being so weak, inobservant, and slow to comprehend what they are up against.

The Judicial Battlespace, Where Only One Side Shows Up : Elections are only half of the battlefield. The other half is the legislative/judicial landscape where laws are discreetly created and enacted without voter approval. The left tirelessly pushes its agenda through an army of lawyers and judges, with the right not even noticing. This unchallenged activity from the left is the reason that they have managed to reduce their dependence on the electoral process, easily duping Republicans into thinking that winning elections is a 'victory against leftism'. That Republicans be distracted from even noticing this crucial other half of the battlespace is quite acceptable to the left.

This is why a massive form of brutal redistribution in America today is not even noticed by those who claim to oppose socialism. Alimony is awarded to a divorcing wife on a 'no fault' basis, putting the husband into a 70% marginal tax rate. Even if he did not want a divorce, failure to pay this 'no-fault' alimony carries possible imprisonment. Thus, he is placed into near-slavery, and certainly has no incentive to invent new technologies or start new businesses. 10-30% of the male workforce being under a 70% tax rate during their peak earning years cannot be good for the economy, yet not one 'conservative' is fighting this, as pedestalization trumps capitalism in the conservative ideological hierarchy.

Republican Appeasement of 'Feminists' : As I explained in The Misandry Bubble, a lot of men, both left and right-leaning, have an extremely inobservant belief that groveling to women and excusing them of wrongdoings that no man would be excused for, is the way to get women to like them. In reality, women have the opposite reaction to a man who is too willing to appease, and find such a man to be a useful puppet at best. What makes it worse when a conservative Republican does it, is that in being a white knight, he tosses aside every other principle he claims to advocate.

Most would consider Steve Forbes to be a prominent, central representative of conservative Republican ideology. However, in Forbes magazine he has taken topublishing frequent articles that are decidedly misandric. I had the opportunity to ask him about this online, and he surprisingly gave the unthinking answer, "As a man with 5 daughters, I am concerned about women's issues.". How nice of him, but surely someone as intelligent as Steve Forbes would recognize that caring about the enviroment does not equate to an endorsement of the most fringe lunatic enviromentalists. So why can't he make such a distinction with 'feminism', rather than declare that he endorses any and all 'feminists' without questioning the possibility of extremism (which certainly harms his daughters) in their midst?

Now, for any leftist reading this, I am going to reveal a secret to you. The secret is : it is easy to get a conservative to support any and all government programs as long as it is packaged as 'chivalry'. Do you want more government-subsidized daycare for unwed mothers to get them to vote Democrat? Tell a conservative that supporting this is 'chivalrous' while opposing this is 'misogynistic'. Do you want conservatives to support another tax on the wealthy to finance Obamacare? Tell him that women will suffer without Obamacare. Do you want more money to go towards teachers unions so that they can indoctrinate public school students even more deeply into Marxism? Tell a conservative that female teachers are underpaid (even though they aren't), and need a higher wage. Do you want cap-and-trade or any other Al Gore legislation passed? Find some convoluted way to show conservatives that women would suffer more than men if more carbon dioxide were produced. Yes, they really can be duped that easily. The typical conservative will jump at the chance to out-left a leftist when the prospect of appearing like a hero to women (again, refusing to learn that this actually repels women) presents itself. Try it, and see how every other principle, from small government, to free markets, to support for two-parent upbringings, to adherence to the US Constitution, will be jettisoned in their rush to be a pedestalizing white knight.

My Republican friends get angry when I give away this weakness to the other side. My answer to them is that if your side is so weak and needy that you are afraid of this weakness being revealed, how can you possibly support such useful idiots? Reform your side instead, and even I would subsequently rejoin.

These three reasons are why we see conservatives rarely driving an agenda, but rather only opposing what the left dangles before them as a distraction. Hence, the right keeps falling back and falling back, ceding more and more ground with each cycle. The alternating of power between Democrats and Republicans constitute a two-steps-back, one-step-sideways descent into leftism, so pardon me for not being too excited about the sideways step, the mere postponement we are about to take through the party earning a 4 taking seats from the party earning a 1 out of 10. Their inability to distinguish between insignificant side issues and the topics that actually matter, combined with the needy chivalry that trumps every other principle that they claim to hold, makes the current conservative/Republican mainstream fatally flawed.

While I was in strong agreement with the GOP during the crisis of the last decade, the War on Terror, I see them as very much in a 'useful idiot' role in the crisis of this decade, The Misandry Bubble.

This brings us to the core mismatch in US politics. As the emergence of the Tea Party has shown, at least 70% of the electorate wants lower taxes and lower spending. The approval ratings of the last 3 Presidents all rose and fell in tandem with the level of government spending. All this is established, yet the voters can't seem to figure out how to achieve it.

Back to The Misandry Bubble, where I establish that 70-80% of all government spending is a transfer of wealth from men to women in some form or the other. Entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare are mostly financed by taxes paid by men, but are mostly consumed by women, who live 7 years longer than men, thus creating a reality where a woman's post-65 lifetime is twice as long as a man's (7 years for a man, 14 years post-65 for a woman). Most of the increase in public sector employees have been female. Through unopposed 'feminist' lobbying, most of the $800B stimulus was diverted away from infrastructure projects since too few women work in those, and instead diverted to the already bloated healthcare and education sectors in order to employ more women. Teachers are not just well-paid, but it is a profession that men are mostly barred from. Extreme subsidization of single motherhood has created an America where 41% of all babies are born out of wedlock.

Therefore, if the electorate is truly interested in shrinking the size of government, they first have to confront the artificially created absurdities in American society that are currently considered normal. There is a reason that all traditional societies, whether European or Asian, shamed unwed mothers and recognized them to be parasites. There is a reason the word 'homewrecker' was common until recently. There is a reason there were no jobs for 'court appointed visitation supervisors' to be employed by the state to oversee the actions of a man who has had his children taken from him on a 'no fault' basis. There is a reason that any successful society defended the institution of marriage fiercely by making marriage at attractive arrangement for the man, which in turn ensured that the woman was better off as well. No successful society has replaced the family unit with government, yet America is attempting to do this with taxpayer funds.

To even the most strident Tea Partier, I ask, how badly do you want to trim government spending? Badly enough to cut single mothers off from the trough, and thus prevent the creation of future single mothers and their spawn? Badly enough to lay off thousands of teachers, and fight teacher's unions attempts to prevent merit-based performance reviews? Badly enough to be far more courageous than needy socons, and work to crush the predatory divorce industry, that strives to increase divorces in order to employ more people in the divorce ecosystem? Badly enough to phase out major elements of SS and Medicare (and Obamacare), even if 'women will suffer from the cutbacks'? Badly enough to be called a 'misogynist', 'loser', and 'worse than Hitler'? Badly enough to receive every form of shaming language they can fling at you?

There will be no reduction in Federal, State, or Local government spending in the US without a fierce and pervasive detection, confrontration, and reduction of state-supported misandry, currently propped up by both Democrats and Republicans.

Do you, the American voter, have what it takes to save America?

As a Futurist, it is my job to bring attention to topics that will become more widely discussed several years from now. When the points detailed here are discussed more openly in 2017-18, remember who defined the heart of the challenge in 2010.

Is the GOP likely to slash government spending to a level that voters seek?

Yes

They will make moderate reductions

They will make no reductions, or worse

Free polls from Pollhost.com

Note on Comments : As I already explained in The Misandry Bubble, any Pavlovian utterance of the word 'misogynist' takes very little probing to quickly reveal itself as just projection of anti-male bigotry outward, and is an admission of such bigotry. Although I am amused that 'feminists' still can't even spell the most important word in their vocabulary.

Observers have been waiting for carbon nanotubes, buckyballs, and graphene to transform the world for quite some time, and the wait has been longer than they expected. Enthusiasts for this new miracle material had all but vanished. Is this warranted? Where does the state of innovation in various forms of carbon, that could yield ultra-strong, ultra-light materials and superfast computing really stand?

Ultra-dense computing and storage : Graphene transistors smaller than 1 nanometer have been demonstrated. Carbon allotopes could keep the exponential doubling of both computing and storage capacity going well into the 2030s.

Carbon Fiber Vehicles : This lightweight, ultrastrong material can save vast amounts of fuel by reducing the weight of cars and aeroplanes. While premium products such as the $6000 Trek Madone bicycles are already made from carbon fiber, greater volume is reducing prices and will soon make the average car much ligher than it is today, increasing fuel efficiency and reducing traffic fatalities.

Energy Storage : Natural Gas is not only much cheaper than oil per unit of energy (oil would have to drop to about $30 to match current NG prices), but the supply of NG is more evenly distributed across the world than the oil supply. The US alone has an enormous reserve of natural gas that could ensure total energy independence. The main problem with NG is storage, which is the primary reason oil displacement is not happening rapidly. But microporous carbon can effectively act as a sponge for natural gas, enabling safe and easy transport. This could potentially change the entire energy map.

There are other applications beyond these core three, but suffice it to say, the allotopes of carbon can perform a greater variety of functions than any other material available to us today. Watch for indications of carbon allotopes popping up in the strangest of places, and know that each emergence drives the cost down ever lower.